Apple’s intent with the Mac is on your expertise to be as straightforward to make use of as potential. On the similar time, there’s additionally a wealthy world of hidden options and settings to probe for these of us who aren’t content material with default macOS. When you may mess with Terminal instructions or comb each web page of varied settings menus to search out the good things, you can too make issues simpler for your self with TinkerTool, an app that places obscure Mac options at your fingertips.
Modify look settings for varied apps
TinkerTool enables you to prohibit darkish mode to sure elements of macOS as an alternative of enabling it systemwide. Open the app, go to the Look tab and check out the choices. You can prohibit darkish mode to the menu bar and the dock, whereas conserving nearly all different apps in gentle mode.
Alternatively, you may individually choose apps to maintain in gentle mode. The caveat right here is TinkerTool can’t entry all apps, so your decisions could also be a bit restricted. You may also go to the Safari tab if you wish to pressure the browser to stay in gentle mode.
Repair Finder frustrations
While you go to TinkerTool’s Finder tab, you will have the chance to repair a number of annoyances rapidly. You’ll be able to pressure Finder to point out the trail to any given folder within the window, which is useful if you happen to’re attempting to stick a precise location into Terminal instructions.
Similarly, you can disable Finder sound effects, remove animations, and stop Finder from creating hidden DS Store files on network drives. You can also hide features like Burn Disc or Connect to server from the Finder, if you don’t find yourself using these features.
Change the dock to your liking
TinkerTool’s Dock tab lets you disable animations, such as the one for showing or hiding the dock, and prevents any modifications to the dock. Restricting changes in the dock is useful if you share your Mac with others and they accidentally change your preferred layout. You can also add a spacer between two dock icons for better organization.
Change screenshot settings on the Mac
Your Mac has plenty of screenshot-related options buried in various menus, and TinkerTool puts the most useful of these in one section. Go to the app’s General tab and scroll down to the Screenshot file format box. Here you can change the default screenshot format, remove the shadow from your screenshots, hide screenshot preview thumbnails entirely, and change where screenshots are saved by default.
Other useful settings
TinkerTool lets you choose what happens when apps crash. If you’re repeatedly annoyed by that “This application quit unexpectedly” pop-up, you can change or disable it. Go to the Desktop tab and take a look at the options under When applications crash.
You can also make it easier to resize windows in macOS by enlarging the resize area. Go to the General tab and check the second option in the Windows section.
Explore more of the changes available in TinkerTool and see what you like—be sure to read the description at the end of each settings page, because it describes what you need to enable these changes. Sometimes you may have to log out and log back in to your account; other times, you may have to restart some apps for the changes to take effect.
Finally, if you’re not happy with the changes you’ve made using TinkerTool, go to the app’s Reset tab and select Reset to pre-TinkerTool state to undo all changes in one go.